The hand your dealt

Alex O'Brien is a science writer in the UK - and an amateur poker player. According to a recent interview, she is teaching her five-year-old how to play poker.

O'Brien believes that playing poker is highly educational and develops lots of important skills for life including "risk assessment, probabilistic thinking, emotional resilience and discipline."

ONE THING she emphasises is the need to invest time to master it - doing it deep by studying and playing the game can be quite empowering.

You need to pay attention to and manage your emotions and understand others. You need to think critically and make decisions based on probability and with only part of the information - you don't know what anyone else has in their hand or their mind. And you learn how to lose and move on.

So whose deal is it?